Seasonal letter

[altivo]

This year, the dogs wrote our Christmas letter for us. You may find the results amusing:

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4976570

Pierogi and ginger cookies accomplished. Now I have to remember to get the ham out of the freezer tonight so it is at least partly thawed. It's already fully cooked, but it would be hard to reheat it if it were frozen solid.

The last of the mail order gifts arrived today, so that's taken care of. I wanted to get Gary a laptop and told him to shop around for what he would like. He found a pretty good deal on an HP 17 inch screen and after I make sure he understands a couple of the specs, we'll probably order it for him tonight. Sounds fine to me, overkill in fact, but I won't be hauling the thing around. It weighs almost seven pounds. Yeesh.

Tomorrow the dentist, then a couple of small shopping tasks (I need some nice wine for gifts) and it will be all done except for wrapping the packages. Haul all the Polish food to Chicago for Gary's family dinner on the 24th, and we get to come back and relax for the rest of the weekend (I hope.)

Red got into trouble again today, but it was because Gary didn't crate him when he should have. Nothing terribly serious, fortunately. He seems to have grabbed a plastic container of oyster crackers and chewed it open. Probably a good chunk of the weekend will be spent reorganizing the kitchen to get everything out of his reach. Thank goodness he seems to have no interest in chewing other things, just food.

Comments

[schnee]

Heh... cute letter, yes.

And seven pounds? That sounds like a real schlepp-top, then. *s* But as long as you don't have to lug it around yourself... ^^

[altivo]

Yeah, it's 3 Kg. But he hauls a lot of heavy stuff with him everywhere, so I'm not surprised that he thinks that's fine. The one I just got for myself not only weighs less (0.9 Kg) but cost a lot less too. XD

[schnee]

Ah, yours is probably a netbook of sorts, then?

I've always wanted to get something along the lines of the Panasonic Let's Note R-series myself — small laptops that weigh in at less than a 1 kg but that nevertheless are fully-featured, with enough RAM, a "normal" x86 CPU (not suitable for games, but fine for office applications) and a decent-size harddisk. Alas, I don't think they're available outside of Japan.

(Of course, when I say "I've always wanted", that's not taking into account whether I could actually afford it, and/or pay the upkeep that would inevitably come with it, but I *would* like to get one of these.)

[altivo]

Yep, it's a netbook style device. ASUS was the originator of the concept, I think. I particularly wanted a solid state drive rather than spinning platters, and they seem to have made more of those than anyone else, though it seems that the usual Windows user demand for more storage, more storage has pretty much pushed the SSD out of the marketplace again. At 20GB, I think this one will be more than adequate for my style of use, and especially since it also accepts USB drives or SD cards when needed.

Cost of a netbook used or refurbished isn't bad at all. Lots of them available for $200 or less. I'm a little concerned about the 3/4 size keyboard, but can probably adjust to it. I used a Compaq notebook computer in that size range in the past (so long ago it came with MS-DOS on it,) and got used to it well enough.